Inspiration Report

So, we’ve been gabbing a lot about love lately. You are sending me love stories of how you met your Valentines. Spirit Junkie Gabrielle Bernstein shared a meditation for romance. We even got a definition of love from 1 Corinthians 13. And of course, we stopped to watch some baby twins bounce to Johnny Cash (which has nothing to do with love, but it’ll make you feel good).

That’s a lot of love talk, and we haven’t even gotten to Valentine’s Day yet. And I’m pretty sure some of you already sick of it.

Trust me when I say I get it. You’re talking to the girl who used to boycott and generally despise this red-heart-covered, chocolate-laced holiday. Although this year I have someone special in my life, it’s the first time in a very long time. Up until a few months ago, I was the poster girl for singleness – not only a client, but the president of the lonely hearts club. I know how irritating Valentine’s Day can be, because it can dredge up feelings of being lonely and unlucky in love.

There’s so much I could say about how to approach all this Valentine nonsense when you’re without a love interest, but everything I come up with boils down to two words:

Love thyself.

There is no love affair as essential as the one you have with yourself. It’s difficult to be in a relationship with anyone else when you can barely feel comfortable in your own skin. Even your spiritual connection with God suffers when you don’t love yourself. Everything you see, sense and feel comes through the filter of what you think about you. When you’re judgmental and critical of yourself, you tend to see everyone else treating you the same way. It’s hard to give love and even harder to receive it.

So, that’s my two cents. Be in love with you. Be your biggest fan. Give yourself grace where you’re flawed and praise when you’re due. It’s amazing how much love you can attract into your life when it’s already on the inside of you shining through.

Christine Arylo knows what I’m talking about. I’ve talked with her about how to fall in love with yourself. In her latest video, she wants you to know you can end the loneliness in love!

While you’re crafting your love stories, it’s a good time to pause and think about what love really is. I’ve never found a better explanation than 1 Corinthians 13. The Message Bible has a translation that truly gets to the core of what love is all about. Enjoy.

The Message (MSG)
1 Corinthians 13

The Way of Love

If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don’t love, I’m nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate. If I speak God’s Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, “Jump,” and it jumps, but I don’t love, I’m nothing. If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don’t love, I’ve gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I’m bankrupt without love.

Love never gives up.
Love cares more for others than for self.
Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have.
Love doesn’t strut,
Doesn’t have a swelled head,
Doesn’t force itself on others,
Isn’t always “me first,”
Doesn’t fly off the handle,
Doesn’t keep score of the sins of others,
Doesn’t revel when others grovel,
Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,
Puts up with anything,
Trusts God always,
Always looks for the best,
Never looks back,
But keeps going to the end.

Our very own Spirit Junkie Gabrielle Bernstein’s new video is a must for anyone feeling unlucky in love this Valentine’s Day. You have control over your romantic blueprint, and Gabby is here to show you how.

I used to tell people that Valentine’s Day was the same as Yom Kippur to me. I didn’t think much of it, because it didn’t pertain to me. Even as of last year, I’d made peace with the quasi-holiday. I resigned to the fact that I was simply unlucky in love but rich in other areas of life. So the best recourse was to enjoy my life.

Funny how life can change…

For the first time in more than a decade, I have a Valentine. I am still amazed and somewhat dumbfounded every day that this valiant stranger rode into my life on a motorcycle and swept me off my feet. It’s all the mushy stuff of romantic comedies that I used to swear didn’t happen in real life. God has interesting timing and an ironic sense of humor.

What I love most is how we met. There’s not enough space here to tell the story properly and for you to see all the plot twists and near-misses that led to the perfect moment for both of us. We’d been on the same campus, worked for the same company, knew many of the same people and even sat in the same room together on numerous occasions for years without ever knowing each other. It took one wrong turn for us to collide… that ended up not being so wrong after all because it brought us together.

This all led me to think about love stories and how they start. To me as a single woman, the trickiest part of this whole romance thing is how it begins. How do people meet? What keeps them in each others’ atmospheres after meeting?

I think we’ll explore this for a bit as the days gets closer to Valentine’s Day. Let’s start with your story. How did you meet your Valentine? Tell me your love story. I’ll be posting the best responses in a special Beliefnet feature.